


I really don't blame you for being dead, but you can't have your sweater back.

by inkrush81



Series: The Adventure of the Straw House [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Canon compliant through the finale of season two, Gen, Ghosts, M/M, Post-Reichenbach, then we get wonky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-29
Updated: 2014-06-29
Packaged: 2018-02-06 19:04:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1868979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkrush81/pseuds/inkrush81
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which after the Fall, Sherlock is haunted, literally.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I really don't blame you for being dead, but you can't have your sweater back.

**Author's Note:**

> Content warning: this fic deals predominately with suicide and bereavement. Also, drug use and mentions of ptsd.
> 
> Title and some points of premise from Richard Siken’s “Straw House, Straw Dog.”

It had been three days before he saw him. Sherlock had used the distraction of his suicide to disguise himself and sneak on board a tanker that would take him out of England without any particular people knowing.

That’s the short version, anyway. The long version is considerably less pleasant. 

Standing at the edge of the roof, while listening to John babble to try and stop him, the only thing Sherlock could think was _James Moriarty was dead_. He killed himself. Leaving Sherlock alone in the world. Of all the ways their Reichenbach game could have resolved, Sherlock hadn’t expected that. He’d stepped on to the ledge the first time thinking he’d come back, surprise Moriarty, and their play would resume. Then he’d caught on to what Jim was really saying, about the recall code at least, and Sherlock knew he could turn it around. But he hadn’t expected real death for either of them. He hadn’t seen Jim’s suicide coming at all.

Sherlock jumped. But Moriarty was still lying in a pool of his own blood. The detective couldn’t bear the thought of leaving the criminal’s body on that hospital roof for somebody else to find or for the birds to defile (not to mention what such a discovery would do to his plan of eradicating Moriarty’s web of crime). After John had felt for his pulse and after they had taken him inside the hospital, the detective had gone to get Moriarty. Sherlock climbed the final stairs to the top for the second time that day. There was no anticipation this time. No adrenaline or excitement rushing through his veins. He felt like he was in a daze. He had pretended to be dead and followed the plan he’d set out, but he was just going through the motions. In his mind, he was running that final meeting with Jim over and over. How didn’t he see it? How had he not understood?

He opened the door and there was Jim Moriarty still lying dead in a pool of his own blood, right where Sherlock had left him.

The detective stepped over to the criminal and crouched next to his body, before sitting down hard. Sherlock’s eyes catalogued Jim as he would any other corpse presented to him. Moriarty was dead. Remembering their time together, there were so many clues as to why. 

Sherlock watched as a slight breeze barely ruffled the criminal’s hair. Most of it was sodden from the rain but the underside was glommy with blood, which had spread considerably in the half hour Sherlock had been pronounced dead on the sidewalk outside of Bart’s.

The detective knew he would have to leave London as soon as possible for this new plan to work. And no one could know Moriarty was dead. Idly, Sherlock thought that it would be nice to take Jim’s skull with him. A familiar friend to bring along with him on this new and somber adventure, despite knowing that it would ultimately take too much time to get properly sorted.

Sherlock’s phone buzzed meters away from him, still where he tossed it. He knew without looking that it is Molly telling him he needs to hurry up. The detective sighed. He told her quite clearly that once the plan was in motion, radio silence was imperative and Sherlock knew that he couldn’t sit here all day. 

He could feel the still damp of the gravel seep through his coat. He had to keep to the schedule he and Molly set out. He needed to get out of England before the events that transpired came to the elder Holmes’ attention. Mycroft would want to do something foolish like clear his name or interrogate him about Moriarty’s whereabouts and thus waste Sherlock’s precious head start. The detective had to finish what he started. But he couldn’t leave Jim here. 

The criminal clearly didn’t have people of his own; or rather, people who he would care got to say goodbye at his graveside. The detective, pressed for time and with a certain appreciation for the irony involved, decided he would arrange for Moriarty to be buried in Sherlock’s own coffin. As long as his funeral was a closed casket, the criminal would get some ceremony, even if it wasn’t honoring him by name. 

Sherlock maneuvered Moriarty’s body to a position that would be more conducive to manhandling down a couple flights of stairs. Somehow, within the course of adjusting the corpse, Moriarty’s phone slipped out of his pocket and bounced twice before landing face up a few feet away.

Sherlock looked at the criminal’s phone with some distaste. The sight of it drew connections out of his brain entirely unbidden; from the first time he’d heard his ringtone, “Staying Alive,” and back to tea and Jim’s chiding reprimand of “I did tell you, but did you listen?” and ending on the roof with the song again and Jim’s gun. The one he hadn’t brought for Sherlock, but for himself. 

It was just a phone. One with a taunting ringtone. It looked like any other, except it was most certainly an in to Jim’s network, as it likely held all his contacts, a datebook, his email, and who knew what else. Sherlock couldn’t pass up the opportunity, just because it would remind him of all those things whenever he looked at it. The detective shoved it in his coat pocket and lifted Moriarty’s cold body.

 

 

 

He got off when the tanker docked in Algeria. Sherlock had jumped on the first ship leaving London regardless of it’s destination. It hadn’t really mattered where it was headed anyway, because the thing about Moriarty was that he’d had his fingers in as many interesting pies as he could stick them in, which was indeed a global endeavor. After being on the freighter for two days, Sherlock had made some headway on Jim’s phone, which mercilessly wasn’t password protected, and was trying to make sense of the notes the criminal had left in his datebook and under the contacts. 

The detective’s got himself off the tanker and was about to seek out the underground elements of Oran, when he saw him.

Forty paces behind him on the street, he caught sight of a familiar figure. _No, it was not possible. Jim was dead._ He took an unexpected turn left, then a odd right. Every time he turned down a different street, Sherlock could see him out of the corner of his eye. Black coat, pressed suit, blank expression: following him. It’s several other random streets taken later that Sherlock finally just turned around abruptly and caught Jim Moriarty furtively standing at the other end of the block. 

He looked oddly amused. Their gazes locked but it wasn’t like any of the other times they’d held eye contact. Jim’s eyes were empty. They frequently seemed to have that effect but Sherlock could always glean something from them... but not now. They were unreadable.

They were still staring, blue on black, when Sherlock was jostled as a couple brushed past him and the moment between them was broken.

The criminal’s face twisted oddly and he half laughed, then started to turn and walk away. Sherlock was going to run after him, but then he saw the back of the criminal’s head. There was a huge gaping hole. Skin and hair were missing. Even at this distance Sherlock could see Moriarty’s brain. Then Jim was gone, around a corner and out of sight. 

Sherlock had just seen a ghost. 

 

 

 

The aftermath of the sighting was not as bad as Sherlock expected. His brain was playing tricks on him (again). Only this time, there were no drugs in fog and Jim was dead, after all, and Sherlock was taking that fact hard. Harder than anyone would have guessed, but that was because the only person who could ever really understand what it was like to be alone in their genius had killed himself while holding Sherlock’s hand and looking into Sherlock’s eyes.

The detective decided that as he was so stressed and paranoid and _grieving_ , it shouldn’t be a surprise that he saw the criminal. _Of course,_ Sherlock was taking it hard. _Of course,_ he was seeing Jim. He wanted the criminal to still be playing games with him. He desperately wanted the man to not be dead. But it didn’t matter what Sherlock Holmes wanted because Jim Moriarty took himself out of the equation with a bullet to the brain and there was no way out of that. 

 

 

 

Without Moriarty’s brain at the center, the strands of his web appeared deceptively inert. Sherlock knew those agents, not without their own ambitions, would likely seek employment elsewhere. A wide range of skilled mercenaries who were now for hire wasn’t exactly something that the detective wanted to turn his back on. There was a reason the criminal had employed them and Sherlock knew that there was always a demand for the services Moriarty’s people could offer.

His new plan, a variation on his original post-Reichenbach plan which now accounted for Moriarty’s death, was quite simple. Sherlock was going to dismantle the criminal’s empire from the inside out and then come back. He estimated it would take a year or two abroad, at most. Which in the scheme of things was not a huge loss, considering the far-reaching scope and danger Moriarty’s web still posed without its spider.

Then Sherlock would come back to Baker Street. His named cleared and everything would be as it once was.

 

 

 

The next time it happened, it had been a week since the Fall. Sherlock woke up in a small hotel in Morocco and there Jim was sitting on the barely stable wooden dresser, legs swinging beneath him; feet clacking loudly on the drawers. Sherlock glared groggily at the apparition half in annoyance, half in horror.

“You can see me, can’t you?” Jim asked, pleased triumph tinging the edges of his voice.

Sherlock gaped. 

“You can!” Jim exclaimed in genuine delight. This Jim that was not Jim could do the Irishman’s lilting accent to a T and Sherlock was in no way surprised that his brain had memorized one of the criminal’s more distinctive features and was able to spit it back up just to taunt him. 

Sherlock shook his head. He didn’t need to be seeing things. Not now. Not when he had to keep his wits about him. He couldn’t mourn his losses now. But this phantom was persistent, just like his real life, now _dead and gone_ , counter-part. The apparition didn’t leave for the rest of the day, so the detective positioned himself so Moriarty was just out of sight in a futile attempt to get something done; except Sherlock’s attention kept flicking back to the apparition of Moriarty who did not speak and just sat watching him.

 

 

 

During the days that followed, Sherlock threw himself into planning the destruction of the criminal’s empire. Moriarty’s phone would come heavily into play as it housed a surprising amount of information concerning his work. The detective had to decipher the coded notes, research his contacts, and, of course, recreate the files he had already assembled concerning Moriarty’s web, which were sitting useless back in 221b. The criminal’s date book was empty after the morning of May 4th. 

Sherlock didn’t wonder why. 

With still no official word on Moriarty’s place in ‘the Reichenbach liar’ debacle and not a single trace of Jim’s body, it would appear to all the criminal’s clients he was still alive. As Sherlock had the criminal’s phone, the detective’s new plan involved him pretending to be Moriarty. Organizing new cases and then arranging for the agents to be caught in the act. Taking the major operations of Moriarty’s web down from the inside was an infinitely better plan than what he had before, though the cost was anything but negligible. 

It was not easy pretending to be Jim, or, at least, not as easy as he would have thought given their extended similarities. Planning the crimes was like reading things in a mirror. He knows the form, but doing it forwards is unnatural. Often complex and, following Jim’s form, isolating work. 

According to the text logs from Moriarty’s last fifty jobs, there was not a single one indicated the criminal had put his hands near the greasy wheels and bloody wrenches. This was what made Sherlock’s plan viable, no one could say he wasn’t Jim.

 

 

 

“You’re the only person I can get to see me, you know?” Jim commented, as if continuing the conversation after a few days of Sherlock decidedly ignoring the apparition. The detective wondered why his mind was still trying to lure him into a fantasy world of ghosts. It unnerved him that Moriarty’s death had destabilized him to the point that he had lost control of this part of his mind. Jim’s specter roamed without confine or consent, with his odd silence and dilapidated skull, never taking off that overcoat he was wearing on the roof. 

 

 

 

“What are you planning on doing now?”

Sherlock did not answer. His subconscious knew what he was bloody well doing now, he didn’t need to tell it. 

But the eyes of the apparition Moriarty were boring into the detective. Unless, Sherlock thought, he meant _without the criminal_ , which would be a very fitting question indeed.

 

 

 

He slept little, preferring to throw himself into the work. Most nights he passed out from exhaustion and couldn’t remember what he dreamed about. 

It was those nights when the work has stilled and sleep eluded him that he remembered the warmth of Jim’s hand. How hesitant he was and yet the desire.

Sherlock would remember the way Moriarty had nodded. As if in that moment he had made up his mind to really do it; decided that this was the highest point his life could reach and that he should end it at the top. It was that momentary consideration that eats him up. Moriarty considered taking Sherlock up on his offer. The detective and the criminal could have been in some far away place right now, enjoying each other’s presence, if only they had taken the chance they had never allowed themselves before. 

Moriarty died with Sherlock’s hand gripped tightly, their eyes locked. Sherlock was the last person Jim spoke to; the last voice he’d heard. What greater compliment could there be? 

It wasn’t like they didn’t know this was going to end. Sherlock just had hoped it wouldn’t.

He wanted their game to be enough. He wanted to be enough.

 

 

 

_“You must be my lucky star; ‘cause you shine on me wherever you are. I just think of you and I start to glow. And I need your light and, baby, you know!_

_“Starlight, Starbright!”_

Sherlock was on the road out of Beirut. A little more than a month of rooting out Jim’s contacts, the detective found Moriarty’s web wasn’t what he had expected. The true scope of the criminal’s empire was becoming clearer in his mind and it certainly was not the supposed thousand strands. It was more like a couple of hundred, if that. There were so many people that he’d questioned that the name Moriarty meant nothing to, but just the same there were those he had asked not expecting a reaction who clammed up immediately. From the ones who could be persuaded to talk, Moriarty ran through his human agents quickly or they kept their heads down.

_“You must be my lucky star; Cause you make the darkness seem so far and when I'm lost you'll be my guide, I just turn around and you're by my side-”_

Sorting through all of this would certainly be easier if this apparition of Moriarty didn’t keep accosting him. 

Objectively, the apparition isn’t bad, considering he was hitting most of the high notes. The song choice, though, certainly brought the performance down somewhat. Sherlock lowered the volume on the car’s radio. But the apparition kept belting out the chorus at top volume.

_“Starlight, starbright, first star I see tonight, starlight, starbright, make everything alright-”_

It’s all in his mind, it’s all in his mind, Moriarty was singing some obnoxious pop love song in his mind, and really he couldn’t think like this.

_“Come and shine your heavenly body tonight, ‘cause I know you’re going to make everything alright”_

Jim continued to sing with some exaggerated feeling. Sherlock’s eyebrows climbed even higher.

“Must you do that?”

“ _Oh_ , so you're talking to me now?” the apparition preened.

Sherlock exhaled and said nothing. Jim responded in kind, gloating victory gone as soon as it came. Minutes passed and the apparition didn’t move. Finally, Sherlock alone in a ‘borrowed’ car and with an empty road stretching out before him, gave in, turned, and asked.

“Why are you here?”

Jim’s visage switched from congenial to a dead glare.

“I know you can be a bit slow sometimes, _darling_ , but really, do you think I’d want to be _just_ hanging around you?”

No, he wouldn’t, Jim wanted to be dead. He wanted Sherlock to be dead. He wanted to solve their problem. Living was boring. How could haunting the detective be any better than just being dead? To Jim, it wouldn’t. 

This wasn’t Jim’s choice. 

“I’ve willed you out of your nonexistence?” Sherlock hazarded.

“Shockingly, not everything revolves around you,” Moriarty’s lips twist in sardonic irony. 

“Prove it.”

The apparition smirked. _Challenge accepted._

 

 

 

Moriarty’s proof didn’t come in a form Sherlock would have thought, but then it was Jim and when had the criminal ever been obvious?

“Did you know you have a Wikipedia page?” Moriarty asked, the idleness in his tone belaying the significance of his question. 

“Seems like the sort of thing John would have mentioned to me,” Sherlock paused in thought, as he toweled his hair dry. 

“No,” Jim continued, watching the detective with a particular interest. “He wouldn’t have been able to. It was filled in hours before the Fall.” 

So John wouldn’t have had time to find out about it and there was no way that Sherlock would have heard of it without the doctor’s mentioning. The detective wasn’t interested in the media maelstrom that followed his disgrace and never clicked on articles bearing his name, internet encyclopedias included. This was Jim’s proof. His evidence that Sherlock was really being haunted by him and not loosing his mind. Sherlock thought he would have chosen something a little flashier. 

“Of course, you would know the hour someone filled it in,” Sherlock scoffed. Jim looked at him like he was missing something obvious, then he sighed, and before Sherlock could ask anything about it, he grinned.

“Don’t you know? I have Sherlock-senses,” Jim explained in a joking tone, that Sherlock thought he probably should take seriously. Then the apparition sobered up, “It mentions me.”

“Ah, it would now, wouldn’t it?” Sherlock allowed, suddenly unsure if he wanted to continue down this line of conversation.

“Says we were the best of mates,” Jim explained. Then in a hushed stage whisper reserved for bad gossip, he said “ _Possibly more!_ ” Jim grinned something nasty, before continuing blithely, “It does you no favors, of course. Cites speculation that you found out about Brook going to the papers and murdered him in a fit of rage. Threw the body in the Thames or sommat. Then wrecked with guilt, jumped off of Bart’s.”

Sherlock had a hard time biting out a retort to those speculations. His mind was off racing what it would have been like being friends with Moriarty (and _more?_ ) He brushed it off by making himself busy checking the apparition’s assertions, opening his laptop and typing “Sherlock Holmes Wikipedia” in the internet search bar.

_Brook and Holmes had been close since the boy’s early teens, but their friendship took a sour turn when Holmes paid his friend to pretend to be a criminal mastermind, in order to ingratiate his purported ‘deduction’ abilities._

All the details Sherlock had seen in Riley’s mock up Brook interview were in the article. The author had cited their sources with a ruthless pendacity that set Sherlock’s mouth in a grim line. But there was no way the detective figured he could have known about the page before the apparition had mentioned it.

“If you want me to commend your plan, you’ll have to try harder.”

“Oh, I already know my plan was brilliant,” Jim stated, solemnly. “Everyone thinks you’re dead and you’re reputation will never fully recover.”

The detective was glad he had his back to the apparition, because his face just twitched without his approval. But then maybe Jim wouldn’t have said anything about it, given the grave tone of his voice.

“And you’re haunting me.”

Sherlock could have seen Jim’s exasperation if he were in space. Well, annoyance was better than him loosing his mind.

 

 

 

“Since you’re really here, you no doubt realize what I’m doing.”

“Yes. Foolishly not taking my advice, obviously.”

“Oh please, who would you be haunting if I were dead.”

“Probably no one,” Jim stated flatly, holding Sherlock’s eyes. The detective frowned and turned back to the papers he has spread around him. 

“I can’t yet,” he said resolutely. “I need to finish what I started.”

“Ah yes, untangling my web.”

“Do you want to help?”

Jim barked a laugh. “Why on earth would I want to do that?”

“Well, will you at least-”

“No.”

“Why not?” Sherlock asked slowly, turning back to Jim; his distrust at Moriarty’s true presence resurfacing again despite their conversation. 

“Think about it.”

“It’s understandable you don’t want to destroy your life’s work, but-”

“No,” Jim interrupted sharply. “ _Think about it._ ”

“You don’t want me to go back to London.”

“No,” Jim dismissed. “I really don’t care where you are and the truth is neither will you when you finish, _so_.”

“I don’t understand.”

Moriarty narrowed his eyes in evaluation before sitting back, then with an odd twist of his mouth he said: “You’ll see eventually then.”

 

 

 

Regardless of Moriarty’s proof, Sherlock was never quite sure he wasn’t just talking to himself. 

Most often these moments of self-doubt took to him when they were talking on the street. They’d step out of his room, in the middle of some discussion, and it would just continue as Sherlock went about his daily business. 

Except the thing was that only Sherlock could see Jim. To everyone they passed, it seemed that Sherlock was talking to himself and, if they noticed, they tended to stare. 

It wasn’t like he’d ever really cared about their opinions. He still didn’t now. 

Despite saying he didn’t want Sherlock to be bored, the apparition had a near universal ban on discussing Sherlock’s new casework, which was something the detective would really appreciate Moriarty’s insight on. Jim relegated himself to making a quip or, more rarely drop a fact, about whoever Sherlock was working to take down that week. 

Without Jim’s ability to orchestrate crimes, they talked about other things. Things that Sherlock had imagined they might talk about in those dull moments waiting for an interesting case to be brought to him.

Sometimes Sherlock couldn’t believe his luck. He didn’t know what he would have done if he had to quit Moriarty cold turkey. The web was one thing, but Moriarty’s ghost was something else entirely. 

Sherlock had all the criminal’s brilliant attention focused on him now. The fact that he could not set up puzzles for Sherlock was frustrating but it wasn’t really a problem when they could talk about anything they wanted. 

So maybe he was talking to himself. So he was talking to Jim Moriarty and people were staring. So people had always stared and it didn’t matter. 

 

 

 

“What’s it like? Being dead?” Sherlock couldn’t help but ask.

“Boring as fuck-all,” Jim said in a dry matter of fact tone. He slumped down further in his armchair, as if to illustrate his similar disinterest in this conversation.

“Really?” 

“Do you _really_ think I’d be following you around if I had something better to do?” Jim eyed the detective from under his eye lashes.

“...Is that supposed to be a trick question?” Sherlock asked turning back to Jim, face scrunched in a facade of mild disbelief.

“You tell me,” Jim said, teeth catching on the right side of his lip, dragging, as he continued to stare at Sherlock.

But then the detective wondered if a dead person haunting a live person was what death consisted of; if that was really _death_ at all. Sherlock had never believed in an afterlife or any higher power. Everything about the apparition’s appearance flew in the face of the detective’s understanding of death, but Sherlock doesn’t need to tell the apparition of all people that.

The detective wanted to know how it works, this haunting thing. And he _could_ have pried Jim open if he were still in a body, but that was really the thing about them that he always seemed to loose sight of in a panic. Sherlock never needed to lord the threat of force over Moriarty. The criminal would tell him if he really wanted to know. If he _asked._

Sherlock asked and Jim told him what he could. As the apparition explained he was new to this. He didn’t really know all the kinks or how long it would last, or even why. 

Of course, Sherlock only ever had more questions for him. And it wasn’t really a surprise that, even after death, Jim Moriarty was still the most fascinating puzzle the detective could find on earth.

 

 

 

They never talk about it; how they came to be here or what will happen when Sherlock goes back to London ( _if_ Sherlock goes back to London). Or if Jim is really just going to follow him around until Sherlock kicks the bucket and joins him on the other side. Jim’s work is dangerous, so that could be a real possibility for the near future.

The detective had given himself two missions that he would accomplish before those questions could even be considered. Sherlock refused to distract himself from the work by deliberating them over. 

Sherlock didn’t ask why Jim did it. He didn’t really need to ask. He _knew_ why. Still, the question lingered after he wakes up from nightmares consisting mainly of the distorted reverberations of a gunshot.

He couldn’t forget the feeling of Moriarty’s hand in his. Worst still, he didn’t want to. Unbeknownst to Sherlock, he had built his life around the puzzles Jim had made for him and in these quiet moments their absence was palpable.

 

 

 

On cases, Jim liked to distract or annoy him, with an odd joke here or the needling remark there. Surprisingly, neither of those things were as distracting as Moriarty’s presence alone. 

Call it a draw. It was the same feeling as what had passed between them whenever they were in a room together while Jim was alive. This desire to be closer. To know every thing that was going on in the criminal’s mind. There was reason why Sherlock had only been able to pay attention to Jim whenever he walked into a room. Apparently, the afterlife was not an exception.

Jim liked to be an annoying bugger, but Sherlock didn’t think the apparition was aware of the effect he had following the detective. Mainly because Jim would just sit in the seat opposite like they were going for a Sunday drive; nothing a miss, not a worry. Sherlock wondered if he’s imagining the crackle of electricity between them. Well, between him and thin air. It was distracting.

Sherlock noticed that Jim never came close to touching him. Well, he would if Sherlock moved into the apparition space, but even then Moriarty took care to not make contact. Their sleeves never brushed. They never touched.

Which maybe wouldn’t be odd if Jim didn’t make a habit of walking through every other person who was in his way. When they were on a crowded sidewalk, Jim would just breeze through people regardless of what they were doing, refusing to delineate from his path with a careful ignorance on behalf of both parties. Sherlock did not want that to happen between them. 

Apparently, neither did Jim because it was only with Sherlock that he maintained any sort of physical distance.

Still Sherlock wanted to know if Jim felt anything when he passed through them. Actually, the detective wanted to know if he would feel Jim. If Jim would feel anything with Sherlock. But admitting this curiosity would be too close to admitting his desire.

 

 

 

Sometimes to take down the bigger strands of Jim’s empire, Sherlock needed to go undercover. It could be trying, to say the least.

For example, this pompous middle level contractor, that Jim occasionally hired out for jobs in Bosnia, had been telling Sherlock off for the last five minutes, quite literally, and the detective would be impressed if he weren’t being simultaneously bored and irritated. So when the guy finally demanded if the front goon Sherlock’s pretending to be understands his exact position within the scope of his operation, the detective had it in his mind to correct him.

“Don’t,” Jim interrupted before Sherlock could even open his mouth. The detective blinked. Jim was, what could only be described as, prowling. The apparition had never interfered with the way Sherlock handled the pieces of his web before. “Your assumption that you are the most knowledgable person in this room and therefor will be able to successfully manipulate these thugs is quite mistaken.”

Sherlock could barely hide his bristle at Jim’s words. But he hadn’t seen the apparition this angry for a long time.

“They will kill you without a second thought, and the only reason they haven’t yet is because they won’t be able to complete this job as precisely with a man down and they don’t have the time to find a replacement. But if you give them trouble, doing this all in a rush wouldn’t be a problem.”

The silence was dragging on too long. The contractor was turning a livid shade of mulberry. 

The apparition circled up around Sherlock’s back and hissed into his ear, “ _Apologize._ Tell him you _understand._ That it won’t happen again. _Sir._ ” Jim said pointedly. 

Sherlock swallowed and swallowed again, eyes darting around the warehouse at the other men watching the scene that was coming to a close and then he repeated the words Jim fed him staring at a pile of sawdust next to a stack of crates. 

The contractor looked only moderately appeased with Sherlock’s debasement, but he dismissed him all the same and Sherlock went back to the task he was working before being called out for insubordination. Jim trailed along beside him, hands in his pockets. His eyes were intent on the building’s rafters, as if waiting for Sherlock’s inevitable explosion.

The detective, however, refused to give him the satisfaction.

“That could have been you’re funeral, you stupid self-ingratiating show-off,” Jim finally said, still frowning.

“Why are you so suddenly interested in if I live or die?” Sherlock said under his breath, acrid.

“You are not as important to the people in this room as you’d like to think,” Jim sighed.

“I wasn’t going to say I was the most important,” Sherlock responded testily. “I was going to say he was incompetent and how easy it would be for someone to-”

“Regardless,” Jim interrupted, eyes rolling. “You wouldn’t have made it through your second sentence before they shot you.”

 

 

 

“Where do you go when I sleep?”

“Who says I go anywhere?” 

Sherlock doesn’t push for an answer. Moriarty was always there when he woke up, even if he wasn’t there when the detective slipped from consciousness.

 

 

 

“How did you manage to do this for as long as you did?” Sherlock asked absently while at the computer. He had been at the computer for hours. The way Jim set up his web had worn on the detective in more ways than one. He was bone tired. Half of the schemes he cooked up weren’t often even complex, just tedious. Sherlock was turning out to be a poor imitation of Moriarty.

“Admitting defeat so soon? It’s only been a year and a half,” Jim said feigning light amusement.   
“Of course not. I am merely curious.”

“Ah, I forget that you prefer to deconstruct them. Setting them up must be especially tiring.”

“You’re evading the question.”   
“I thought it was rhetorical. I think we saw what happened to me, didn’t we, dear?” Jim said, eyes drifting to the ceiling, head cocked in thought. Sherlock stifled a sigh. “Well, if you’re worried about heading my way....”

“I never said-”

“~and I _would_ if I were you~”

“-and I certainly never meant-”

“-You did say you thought you could tie up the remaining strands by September, so really any stress from the job-”

“-that I couldn’t do it. I just wanted to know more of your methods. What you did between cases? If you had any hobbies?”

“Oh? Was that all? You should have said.”

 

 

 

“What are you wearing?” Jim asked, eyeing the detective with distain. 

“My disguise.”

“Ha,” Jim barked a laugh. “I might as well just wait here, so you’ll know where to find me once they kill you. We can go explore the underworld together.”

“What’s wrong with it?

“As if it were only one thing,” Jim practically sung. “They’ll know you aren’t a part of their crew in a glance.”

The scheme Sherlock concocted to ensnare Maupertuis was admittedly rather elaborate. The detective’s research told him that, like most of Jim’s associates, the Baron would not be caught easily and so Sherlock’s offense against him had several stages each with several back-up plans each of which also had several stages in case something went awry.

“Only because I’m not in character yet,” Sherlock cleared his expression and adjusted his posture, all while watching the effect in the bathroom mirror. 

“You should know,” Jim said after a beat of silence, aiming for aloof and adjusting his tie in the mirror. “That Maupertuis and I never always saw eye-to-eye on business matters.”

“This you telling me to be careful?” Sherlock asked, wryly. Jim deigned a sigh, locking eyes with the detective through the glass. 

“All I’m saying is that certain degrees of caution were never inadvisable.” Jim stated matter-a-factly.

Sherlock was struck by the sudden urge to grab Jim by the arms and hug him close. Tell him he would be fine. But the detective couldn’t. 

Instead, he simply nodded.

 

 

 

Back-up plans did come into use.

They were not, however, the ones Sherlock arranged.

 

 

 

Sherlock was fuming, sitting in the passenger seat of a cargo van Mycroft had commandeered to get them out of the compound without any fuss. 

Mycroft’s plan was more ostentatious than Sherlock’s and using Mycroft’s near infinite resources felt like cheating. The detective never asked for his brother’s bloody help. Jim was never going let him hear the end of this.

As if summoned by mere thought alone, the apparition wound his arms around the elder Holmes, nestling his face against the side of the driver’s head rest and holding Sherlock’s gaze with a smirk. It was a disconcerting image. 

“I don’t remember this being one of your escape plans,” the apparition commented sardonically, from his bizarre coziness to the ignorant Mycroft. Sherlock ignored him. He wasn’t going to have that conversation with his brother sitting there.

“Turn in up over there.” Sherlock gestured vaguely to a sign advertising night lodgings ahead.

“Why, pray tell?” Mycroft asked, mildly perturbed. “We are nearly to the airstrip.”

“I would like to shower and change,” Sherlock said and then added in consideration, “And shave.”

“I would much prefer if you waited till we were back on English soil. Surely a couple more hours-” The elder Holmes sounded like he was speaking to a ten year old child. 

“I haven’t been on English soil in almost two years. Since _I_ prefer to do this first, I think _you_ can wait a bit longer.”

 

 

 

Sherlock told Mycroft that Maupertuis was the last piece of the puzzle, and, it’s mostly true. From a large distance it could certainly look like that anyway. One of the things Sherlock had learned about Moriarty’s web over the past two years was that it had innumerable strands, which often had been used in a very limited capacity. Maupertuis was the director of a rather medium sized permanent fixture to Moriarty’s network, which after it’s conception Jim had no real hand in. 

Being criminally active for over twenty years there were too many threads of Moriarty’s web which he had only used once or a handful of times. So in actuality there were many remaining loose threads to snip, but Mycroft didn’t need to know that. 

Or maybe he did, but at the moment Sherlock didn’t really care, given his older brother enjoying having witnessed him being beaten to a pulp. _Enjoying it._

The elder Holmes was prattling on. Sherlock didn’t recall his brother being able to speak Serbian, but he didn’t really care. Frankly, even if Mycroft pulling him out like that had taken less time than the detective’s original plan, dealing with his brother was barely worth it. So instead, Sherlock interrupted, “Why did you even bother?”

“I wanted a progress report.”

“You’ll find I don’t work for you,” Sherlock said, icily. 

The exaggerated frown Mycroft made said he thought differently. 

What the elder Holmes thought on the matter was of little consequence. Besides Sherlock had something he’d been meaning to ask his dear brother. 

The detective waved the barber away. Mycroft stood and walked over to the suite’s door to tip the fellow.

“So, how did Moriarty know those things about my uni years?” Sherlock asked once the elder Holmes was back. 

Mycroft blinks, as if caught off guard by the change in subject. 

“We both know that wasn’t information he could have gotten from just anyone.”

“I thought John told you.”

“Told me what?” 

But the elder Holmes was silent in thought.

“Mycroft, told me what?” Sherlock demanded again. The elder Holmes took a deep breath as he stepped around to the front of the desk and leaned against the dark wood. 

“That I was sorry,” Mycroft sighs. “It was me. I told Moriarty all that. I _traded_ -” he amended, “-those stories for information about his network.”

“In return for what?” Sherlock made no reaction to the elder Holmes’ words.

“He gave us practically all of his agents in South America. Those we picked up gave us the rest.”

Sherlock had heard rumors of a sweep taking place before his years directing and dismantling Moriarty’s web. He’d always been a bit curious how that had happened, because the structure of the criminal’s network hadn’t really allowed for the capture of one, or even a handful of agents, to tear it all down. Now that he knew exactly who gave Mycroft the information, it made sense why the entire continent had been wiped of activity. Still it was only one continent, Sherlock could have gotten more out of Jim. 

“And you thought you should just trade my life story for whatever information Moriarty was _willing_ to give up and then just let him go?”

“He wanted to know about you. He was going to get that information anyway he could. Would you have rather he went to our parents? Our mother?” Mycroft sounded slightly scandalized. But it was such a non sequitur that Sherlock had to roll his eyes. Mycroft had always been closer to their mother, but she had been so absent from their lives by the time Sherlock came around that he wondered why the elder Holmes even bothered. 

“As if they would have known half of that! Like she even cared,” Sherlock scoffed. “Why did you think he wanted to know those things anyway?” 

Mycroft looked considering, clearly trying to find a tactful way out of this. 

“Whatever you thought, that still doesn’t explain why you _traded_ my information,” Sherlock said impatiently.

“He wouldn’t talk. My people tried practically everything. Six weeks and nothing,” Mycroft continued. “So I stepped in. We talked and he wanted to know more about you. I said I would only give facts about you to him if he gave me something in return. It seemed innocent enough.”

“When did these little _conversations_ take place?” 

“Just after the near Scandal with Adler.” 

“You had him for six weeks,” Sherlock confirmed, as pieces fell into place in his mind. Sherlock threw himself into one of the leather armchairs that were situated in front of the desk. “So what did he do?”

“Nothing,” Mycroft stated simply.

“You just kept him locked up?” Sherlock scoffs.“You can’t really expect me to believe that.”

“No, Mycroft frowned as if that were the most obvious thing in the world, something sardonic had crept into his tone, “we let him go home at the end of the day and sent a car around in the morning to have a fresh go at it.” Sherlock thinks about how the real torture would be six weeks of no stimulation. Nothing but the boring concrete walls of the cell. “It’s not like we could have given him something real to work on for us. Not even a fraction of a project, he’d figure it out and ruin it.”

“So he just sat there, not talking, for six weeks,” Sherlock stated, dejected. 

“He stared at the walls,” Mycroft said, then frowned. “If we’re being perfectly _exact_ , he was staring at what he’d scratched into the walls.

“What?” Sherlock asked, utterly confused. He had been to some of the elder Holmes’ interrogation cells. If Mycroft had taken Jim to some secret prison to be tortured, those walls tended to be pretty thick, concrete, and not at all malleable. 

“He’d gotten something and used it to etch all over every surface,” Mycroft elaborated.

Carved into them with _what?_ There was never anything in those types of cells. And what would be strong enough to make an impact besides?

“A diamond,” Sherlock exhaled. 

Jim couldn’t have nicked it off one of the guards. They would have known better then to have let him that close. Barring the fact that Mycroft’s people weren’t supposed to wear their jewelry during interrogations for obvious reasons. So he’d somehow have to have brought it in with him.

“Pardon?”

“He smuggled in a diamond,” Sherlock said. But smuggling required forethought, required a degree of complacency on Jim’s part.

“Oh,” the elder Holmes nodded.

“What was it anyway? What was it he took such pains to write? Or draw?” Sherlock asked annoyed he had to keep needling information out of his brother.

“Just your name,” Mycroft said reluctantly, “scratched over and over.”

Mycroft just kept talking like that information was tomorrow’s weather forecast, as if it would have no bigger impact on the detective then the possibility of _rain_. Sherlock was not listening. He was imagining Jim, with blood dripping down his nose and all the fingernails of his right hand ripped out and a definite fractured rib, taking the diamond that he had brought to scratch the detective’s name on all his cell walls as a reminder of what it was all for. _Who_ it was all for. For a moment Sherlock could barely breathe.

Something very sickly like pride swells in his chest knowing Moriarty had endured that to get to him, but it was tempered by his interactions with the ghost. There was so much more to Jim than Moriarty and over the past two years Sherlock had slowly come to realize what that meant.

His mind was unhelpfully calling up images of the apparition. Like two months ago when Jim grinned after his line of innuendo actually made Sherlock pause. Or Jim’s sardonic quip at Maupertius’ expense just before Sherlock completed the final stage of the scheme.

But his mind had been like a ball of late and it always rolled back to Jim’s final moments on the roof. How he had pulled sherlock’s hand closer to him as he stuck the gun in his mouth. It left Sherlock with an inexplicable desire to throttle Mycroft. He had known.

Sherlock took a deep breath, “So you knew he had all that information and you didn’t think it might be important to tell me?”

“Sherlock, I never expected-” Mycroft began only to interrupt himself. “I thought you’d be able to handle him.”

“No, you thought you could protect me,” Sherlock sneered. 

“Does it matter?” The elder Holmes’ lips thinned, not protesting the accusation. “You won.”

“No, I didn’t,” Sherlock countered testily. 

Finally, something Sherlock had said made Mycroft pause. 

“And yet he _is_ dead,” Mycroft said, attempting nonchalance, but Sherlock could hear the question that took ahold of the elder Holmes’ sentence without permission. If it were any other subject he would smirk at the uncertainty. But it was not. 

Jim was dead and if him being alive was the worst of Mycroft’s fears, Sherlock pitied his brother. Moriarty was never interested in personally destroying everything Mycroft held dear.

“Yes.”

“Then you beat him,” Mycroft stated simply, confused at the confusion over that point.

“Beat him?” Sherlock repeats, incredulous. As if that were the most important thing to latch on to from Reichenbach. “Beat him?!”

From the alarmed expression Mycroft was making, Sherlock no doubt sounded slightly hysterical. 

“Do I look like I _won_?” The detective snarled, before seeing white. Without a second’s more deliberation, Sherlock launched himself the few feet between them to cold clock his brother. Mycroft stumbled back, balance not quite lost, but still clutching his face. Sherlock hit him again and without giving Mycroft time to recover, Sherlock shoved him hard and the elder Holmes fell over. 

“Sherlock-” the elder Holmes gasped out, shocked.

Sherlock took advantage of Mycroft’s prone form and hopped on top of him, wrapping his hands around the elder Holmes’ throat. He thought he would have vaulted over the desk if Mycroft had still been behind it. Sherlock suddenly didn’t understand why, as he searched out the right points to push down on long enough to end Mycroft’s interfering life, that someone as stupid as him could still be here, when Jim, the most brilliant man, wasn’t. Sherlock turned the idea of Mycroft his stupid meddling brother, _dead_ , over in his head. It sounded good.

In spite of the elder Holmes’ writhing beneath him, Sherlock’s hands remained around Mycroft’s neck. He was applying enough pressure that if he sat like that for six minutes, well the Holmes brothers would never be having a dispute over who was smarter again.

“I think he’s got the point,” Jim said. Sherlock glanced up to see the apparition resting on his heels a couple feet away, eyeing the detective with his certain intensity.

Mycroft was still squirming against the detective’s weight. Sherlock pushed down harder.

“And if _I_ don’t think he has?” the detective asked, looking down at Mycroft’s now unconscious face.

“Fratricide is soooooo passé,” Jim chastised, before immediately sobering up. “It was my plan, love. I wouldn’t have been there if I hadn’t wanted to be.” 

Sherlock blinked. Somehow that made it worse. He should have seen. He should have known.

“Sherlock,” the apparition began again when the detective’s hands actually tightened further. “He might be more useful to you alive.”

The detective wavered. Thirty-five years and they hadn’t killed each other yet. It would be a shame to waste all the effort that restraint took now.

“Sherlooooooooooooooock,” Jim complained from the languishing position he took up in Mycroft’s chair. “This is boring.”

 

 

 

The detective had no sooner pressed the down button then an elevator dinged and opened with a clatter of doors. Anthea, with her face in a file folder, nearly ran into him coming out of it.

“You weren’t supposed to be leaving yet. Has he briefed you?” the assistant asked, confused as the detective moved passed her into the lift. 

“He might need your help,” Sherlock said with a gesture to the oak paneled suite as the elevator doors closed between them.

 

 

 

Though Moriarty’s web was basically disentangled, in those two years Sherlock still never found where the criminal had lived. 

The detective had made some calls when he first left the U.K. However, the trail stopped cold on the only lead he had when he found Moriarty’s phone was traced to a PO box which was registered to some throw away fake identity.

Jim was too much of a ghost as it was, with no one knowing anything about the man behind the criminal conspiracy. 

 

 

 

“So I’ll ask you again-”

“I told you I don’t know _anything!_ ” the last of Moriarty’s book-keepers shouted, hoarse. He was tied to a chair, face already bloody and bruised. Sherlock, who had commandeered him days earlier, didn’t even give the man’s pleading a courtesy evaluating glance. 

“And yet we’re still sitting here, so it should be evident that I don’t believe you,” the detective said, putting a set of needle-nose pliers on the bench beside them. He pushed the pliers so they were back in line with the other tools he’d laid out, but had yet to use. “I’ll ask you again-”

“Are you really proceeding with this line of questioning still?” Jim asked bored.

Sherlock was ignoring the apparition’s wayward asides. He hadn’t said the bookkeeper _didn’t_ know. Just that the detective’s questions weren’t going to get the right answers.

“Where did he normally work?”

“Again, that is not pertinent information,” Jim sing-songed from behind him. 

“Look,” Sherlock turned around to face him, angry. “If you’re so certain I’m going about this wrong, tell me what to ask and we’ll get on to more interesting things. If you aren’t going to help, kindly shut up.”

The detective turned back to the bookkeeper, “Sorry about that.”

“Who were you talking to?” the man in the chair asked warily. 

Sherlock narrowed his eyes, “You were saying?”

“I don’t know where he lived. Or where he spent his time. Only where he kept a portion of the money and that’s all gone now,” the bookkeeper spit out frantically.

Sherlock stood and re-examined the tray of tools, “You said that before and, amazingly, I still don’t believe you...”

“Dear lord,” Jim practically cried in frustration. “Ask him about Klages.”

That outburst caught Sherlock’s attention. He turned to Jim again, completely ignoring the man he was interrogating.

“I thought,” Sherlock grinned, turning to where the apparition stood, “you said you weren’t going to help.”

“Yes, but you were _boring_ me,” Jim explained, nastily. 

“Well, since boring you clearly gets me ‘pertinent information,’ maybe I should do it more often.”

“I wouldn’t push your luck,” Jim said, mouth set in a decided frown. The detective finally deigned to turn back to the bookkeeper.

“Tell me about Klages.”

The man shifted only slightly, but it was enough.

 

 

 

He managed to get a name with a tentative attachment to the criminal via his payroll a couple years prior, and a safety deposit box which had since then found a new owner.

 

 

 

“You said that you could go anywhere,” Sherlock stated to the room. 

The criminal hummed assent from his lazy position on the floor.

“Would you see how John is?”

The shiny shoe that had been dipping up and down over Jim’s crossed legs stilled. His eyes flicked over to the detective.

“What?”

“Well, it’s not like he’s going to see you...” 

“Do you really want me to go _spy_ on them?” Sherlock was about to enthuse yes, when he caught Jim’s phrasing.

“‘Them?’” Sherlock asked, confused.

Jim’s eyes went big, like he just realized what he said.

“You already have,” Sherlock stated. Jim sat up, looking a tad sheepish. “Why didn’t you tell me? What do you mean _‘them?_ ’”

“Because, Sherlock, you wouldn’t have believed me,” Jim said, expression all-knowing.

“Why would you lie about that?” the detective sighed in exasperation. The apparition rolled his eyes, as if he could easily defeat that argument. He could. There were too many reasons. “Fine, when have you lied-”

“Memory problems?” Jim broke in. “Do you need a list?” 

“ _-About things like this_ ” Sherlock finished, frowning. But now Jim was glaring at him and maybe Sherlock would have been getting a little antsy if Jim weren’t dead. There was nothing in his gaze that didn’t say ‘I will tear you apart.’ But because Jim could not back any threat; because Jim was dead; because Jim still needed the detective’s distraction. Sherlock stared him down, did not falter. Jim sighed.

“I didn’t tell you because you wouldn’t like it. And then you wouldn’t talk to me,” the criminal swallowed and pressed his lips together. “Sherlock, it is _unbearable_ when you don’t talk to me.”   Jim’s voice may have been steady, but his eyes were sad. 

“I’d talk to you,” Sherlock reassured, despite not knowing whether he’s telling the truth or not, because Sherlock wants so badly to know what Jim knows.

All the same, Jim won’t tell him, “Go see for yourself.”

 

 

 

Of course, Jim was right. Sherlock didn’t like what he found back in London. Turned out John had moved from their Baker Street flat and Sherlock had to do a bit of poking around to find the doctor’s new address. It was late morning by the time Sherlock showed up on John’s stoop, knocking. John opened the door, shock evident on his face.

Sherlock hesitantly smiled and then John hit him. He hit him hard twice and Sherlock was more shocked by that than he should be. Still, the doctor brought him inside. 

John said that Sherlock was lucky to catch him as he was actually running late to work, belaying the silence between them that had grown awkward in the years of separation. The doctor made tea for them both, but his eyes didn’t stray from Sherlock for more than a minute. John handed the detective his cup and demanded Sherlock’s explanation. The detective gave it, sold it, like it would prove something (Jim wrong), like it would change something (whatever it was that Jim said he wouldn’t like).

John was patient. 

Oddly so, Sherlock noted before he started to glance around John’s flat. There were things missing (naturally, nothing of Sherlock’s). There were things replaced (of course, but Sherlock wouldn’t have thought John would have bought _that_ model blender). There were new things. And then Sherlock looked at John. There were not so many things missing as things adjusted. So much as things that weren’t there before. Like that ring on his finger. 

_Oh._

John, who had picked up a few things from his time with Sherlock - or perhaps had been waiting for him to notice, saw the detective’s line of sight and let the quiet drag as he sipped his tea. Then, John asked him outright: Did he really expect that after three years without word everything would be just as he left it? That their lives would have waited for him? 

Sherlock didn’t want to start a fight. Sherlock won’t say yes. Because he hadn’t really thought about the actual act of coming back. Silly, really, three years and not a single thought to it. He had thought about what would happen _after_ the reunion. But never the event itself. Never the possibility of this.

As Sherlock left, the doctor said he should meet her, his wife, now that he was back in London and, you know, alive. John said, “I think you’d like her.”

Sherlock nodded slightly harried, yet dazed, _he’ll be in touch_ , as he went out the door and down the steps.

 

 

 

Jim was waiting for him in the room Sherlock was staying in under a false name in the quite possibly vain hope that Mycroft would take the hint and _bugger off._

So maybe Sherlock was angry. It might have had to do with Jim knew the entire time and didn’t tell him. Or maybe the fact that the apparition wouldn’t leave him alone (or the fact that he didn’t want Jim to leave him alone). 

Perhaps he should have let himself calm down, before they talked. His anger was expected. Jim expected it. But that didn’t take back the fact that Sherlock just broke their unspoken agreement to never talk about how they came to be in this situation. 

Sherlock never should have said: _If Jim hadn’t been so desperate to die, they might have been enjoying themselves right now, instead of here in this- How if he hadn’t killed himself they would have been happier._

Jim had stared like Sherlock had shot him. It was then that Sherlock realized exactly what he had said. The apparition just shook his head, looking sick. Sherlock had no idea ghosts could look sick. Jim’s eyes were so big and sad and _amber._

Jim stepped back, out of the faint light of the hallway, before he was glaring daggers, eyes shuddered. 

Sherlock broke their eye contact, looking at the garishly carpeted floor. He wanted to take it back because he did understand. Really, he did. But the minutes dragged on and when Sherlock couldn’t get the words out, Jim just poofed out of the room.

 

 

 

They don’t speak for days. Sherlock didn’t know what to say. If there would even be something he _could_ say to make this better. But just sitting around London was killing his brain one bored minute at a time. He opened up the newspaper and it was dull, dull, dull, all dull. It was logical that most of the really interesting cases would be gone with Moriarty’s death, but he had expected at least something of interest to remain.

There was nothing.

Every minute he sat around was another reason he should go find someone who would sell him a hit of cocaine. Instead he arranged a meet with Lestrade, under the guise of an anonymous tip that the inspector should meet an informant in an empty parking garage. 

Sherlock waited in the shadows. Lestrade looked like he was doing alright, even if he was still dumb enough to follow such a shite tip. The only sign that something was maybe not on point was him smoking again. A habit that Sherlock certainly didn’t think had anything to do with the Yard’s inability to call on the world’s only consulting detective for assistance. (He did.)

But after Greg hugged him and Sherlock told him his story of the Fall while they smoked, Sherlock asked how things are at the Yard. Lestrade blinked a couple of times, as if work had been the last thing from his mind. 

“Really good, actually. Umm, yeah the numbers just came in last week, and we actually have a 96% solving rate, so brilliant. You know, it hasn’t been this high in ages.”

Sherlock frowned. Greg rocked back on his heels, lighting another cigarette and taking a drag before meeting Sherlock’s gaze.

“That’s what this is all about, isn’t it?” Greg said sounding disappointed but unsurprised. “The smoke and mirrors reappearance from the shadows bit. You want to be let on cases now that your done with criminal empires.”

“Yes.”

“Well, I’m not gonna say I’m sorry that is no longer possible. Our teams are sorting these cases fine without your genius. The only thing I’d be able to offer you is some cold cases, but, as I said, those are few and far between.”

 

 

 

“This is why you wouldn’t help me, isn’t it,” Sherlock said, staring intently at the armchair fibers he was picking at. “You knew I’d get bored faster,” 

Despite the cold that had seeped between them, the detective could see the apparition nod out of the corner of his eye.

 

 

 

“You should go visit Irene,” Jim said to him a few minutes after he was jolted awake from another nightmare. Sherlock eyed Jim, where he was slumped in one of the uncomfortable desk chairs the hotel supplied every room, from across the rumpled sheets and thought that might not be a bad idea. 

 

 

 

Sherlock had not seen or talked to the woman since they parted ways in Karachi. Even though that mishap silenced her errant text messages, the detective had continued tracking her movements and knew that she was living in Barcelona, still occasionally causing trouble.

When Sherlock showed up on Irene’s doorstep still alive, she wasn’t as startled as he had been expecting. Perhaps, a week ago she would have been surprised to see him, Irene admitted to the detective when he commented on her non-plussed attitude as they were sitting over coffee in the flat she shared with her latest partner. But she still had contacts in London and that little visit to John certainly started some rumors. She demanded the scoop, something that would dispel the spurious gossip that surrounded his name; so he told her what really happened, despite there not being much to say. Irene was one of the few other people who even knew Jim, let alone liked him. Sherlock asked if she ever heard from him after the Scandal. 

“We texted here and there. You know Jim,” Her lips quirked into a melancholy smile and internally Sherlock frowned. “I got a couple of delightful pictures of you.” Her grin was hearty as she took another sip of coffee. 

He glanced through the open courtyard door to where the apparition was playing he-loves-me-he-loves-me-not with what Sherlock imagined was an equally nonexistent flower. Sherlock wondered why Jim wasn’t sitting with them or poking at Irene to annoy the detective or even see if she could sense him too. Then Sherlock remembered that Jim could visit the woman whenever he wanted, and probably has seen her a number of times since his death. 

The pause in the conversation dragged and the woman was looking where Sherlock was looking. At nothing.

“You’re seeing him,” Irene said. It wasn’t a question.

Sherlock’s eyes immediately flicked back to her and, too late, he tried to laugh it off, “I didn’t think you were superstitious.”

But Sherlock was too somber, too caught off guard by her perceptiveness and she was not fooled. “He’s here now?”

Sherlock sighed, giving up the charade. “He rarely leaves my side. Claims no one else can see or hear him.” The dark turn of his lips matched the concern in her eyes. 

“Do you think it’s to do with how he died?” the woman wondered. “You were the only one there.” 

Sherlock shrugged. He had considered that as a possible factor, but there was simply no way to prove it. “Did you know?” 

Irene sat back. “No. But looking back it’s easier to see the signs.”

 

 

 

He spent the night. It was good to see the woman. He had always admired her insightfulness and it was a relief to tell someone that he was seeing Moriarty’s ghost. But there was nothing here for him. Irene had remade her life in this city and, despite her offers of putting him up longer, Sherlock knew he didn’t belong in it. Before he left the next morning, the detective asked, a thought that struck him during the night, “You don’t happen to know where he lived, do you?”

Irene’s perfectly sculpted eyebrows shot up and she scoffed lightly, “As if he’d let anyone into his inner-sanctum.”

Sherlock nodded, sucking the inside of his cheek in thought. “Thanks,” he said, his gratitude awkward. It was the least he could say for barging in after all that had happened between them.

“Keep in touch,” the woman said with a wave, watching him disappear down the street with a second invisible shadow.

 

 

 

They were in another train car when Jim said, “Irene and I talked last night.”

Sherlock gave him a curious look.

Jim amended himself, “After you went to sleep, Irene talked to the air she presumed I inhabited.”

“And?” Sherlock asked, genuinely curious.

“She confirmed some things I’d been considering myself,” Jim turned back to the passing countryside.

“And those things are?” Sherlock asked because there had to be a reason why Jim brought this up at all.

“You’ll see,” Jim said to the window.

 

 

 

Sherlock ducked back into his room, finally certain he was not followed. The detective had only stepped out to buy some dinner, but when leaving the take-out place he came under the distinct impression he was being followed. Since donning Moriarty’s mask, his every idle paranoia had been magnified ten-fold and had on more than one occasion proved justified. So, he followed his hunch and spent the better part of an hour looping around the city to loose them. 

However, the moment he shut the door Sherlock felt it in the air, still stifling around him, something else shifted. And there was that smell; distinct, familiar, and ...expected sooner, actually.

“Brother,” Sherlock turned around, putting down his bag of cold dinner. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“I can’t see how you are doing without some ulterior motive?” Mycroft asked humorlessly from his seat at Sherlock’s dining table. The detective moved to the kitchenette, managing to exude a resounding ‘No” without actually saying a word.

“Let me guess: you want me to come home. Some matter of national security you want me to sort for you?”

Mycroft deigned a chuckle, shifted his ever present umbrella, and didn’t say: _I always want you home._ Instead it was all glib pleasantness and: “I know what your looking for and came to save you the trouble.”

Sherlock’s face shut down. He turned to the sink, getting himself a glass of water from the tap. There was no way Mycroft should have figured out _what_ he was really looking for. Yet the elder Holmes never made a personal call for something that he wasn’t sure of. Sherlock took a deep breath, not really caring if the water muffled the sound of defeat, of resignation, out. 

“And what is that?”

“The one cog that can tell you what you want to know. Obviously.”

“What?” The tap goes off and the silence that follows is incandescent. Sherlock spun around, re-evaluating the elder Holmes. “ _You_ found her?”

“Yes, as it so happens,” Mycroft amended himself. “Sorry to ruin your little game of hide-and-go-seek. But well, I thought I’d spare you tracing phantoms for another five months.”

Sherlock braced himself against the kitchen counter. “How did you find out where she is?”

“You take me for such a fool sometimes,” Mycroft sighed as he stands, picking up his coat and setting a large manila envelope on the table. “We’ve been watching her for quite a while now. Couldn’t figure how she fit into his operation, until-” Mycroft sighed looking at him like he expected more from Sherlock. Like he always had.

“But how-”

“A little bird. I’m not going to tell you, Sherlock,” the elder Holmes narrowed his eyes, evaluating, “I’m sure you’d love to puzzle it together yourself.”

“Why are you telling me this anyway?” Sherlock asked. If the elder Holmes really knew what Sherlock was looking for and thought she had that information too, why wouldn’t he just get her to tell him herself?

Mycroft sighed, half way out the door. “I wish you could understand.” 

Sherlock leaned back against the counter. Mycroft nodded and was gone.

 

 

 

Mycroft’s manila envelope carried a full detail on Ingrid Klages. She had been attached to Jim, despite Sherlock having never found evidence that Moriarty had used her on any cases. And as no one knew anything about Moriarty, Sherlock couldn’t figure out in what capacity they had known each other or even who she was. 

Klages had only been mentioned twice: as the beneficiary of a safety deposit box and then on Moriarty’s pay-role the year he and the detective officially met. The thing was she hadn’t been listed in Jim’s contacts and the detective had nothing to go on besides the name he’d gotten barely a year ago. There were any number of Ingrid Klages and Sherlock had only ruled out a third of them over the year.

The copy of Mycroft’s personal file on Klages said she was one of the best programmers on the continent. His notes seemed to think that she may have been Moriarty’s sometimes lover. Extrapolating on that, Mycroft probably thought Sherlock would be able to get her to tell him where Jim laid his head. As if they would have gone back to Jim’s flat instead of hers. As if she _had_ to be a romantic attachment.

Mycroft, perceptive as he was at times, had the potential to be equally out of touch. Actually, Sherlock was mostly annoyed that Mycroft had found the location of Moriarty’s Klages first. Sherlock would comfort himself that the elder Holmes had no doubt scavenged over the detective’s personal case files in his absence and made the subsequent jumps to find her. Now it was up to Sherlock to follow with the actual leg work. 

Which was the other annoying bit. Once Sherlock found Jim’s flat, Mycroft wouldn’t be but a step behind. He knew the elder Holmes had been following him the past couple of years. A fact made transparent when he showed up in Maupertuis’ dungeons.

It wasn’t like he thought he'd be able to keep Mycroft at bay for long with a find like that but he wouldn’t have minded the illusion.

 

 

 

Sherlock really didn’t know what he expected a conversation with Klages to reveal. He knew what he _hoped_ to find, but in actuality the odds she would know seemed unlikely. The threads that tied her to Jim were just too scant for her to have the information he’d been seeking for the past year. 

Sherlock weighed the options of the optimal place to meet her. He has her home address and the seclusion that could offer would likely be important to anything related to Moriarty, who was only spoken of in hushed whispers. Then again, popping around her place unknown and unannounced was a good way to spook her, and after searching for so long he couldn’t have that. 

However, when he arrived at her office, he found Klages to be on her lunch break. Sherlock told her assistant it was just his luck that she should have left already. He was a friend, actually, and they were meant to have lunch together.

The assistant’s lips twisted, confused as she glanced at her computer screen, “I don’t see you in her datebook...” 

“Hurm,” Sherlock frowned, then fidgeted as if in a hurry. “Could you tell me how to get to the cafe she went to? I haven’t been on campus for so long...” 

The assistant then riffled through some papers, pulling out a foldable map of the TUM campus. “Here is where we are, and if you take this route to here” the young woman’s pen illustrated the path Sherlock should take to find the cafeteria Klages favored for their sandwiches. Sherlock thanked her, taking the map, and headed out the door.

 

 

 

Ingrid Klages was standing in line at the sandwich station just like her assistant had assumed. The detective recognized her from the picture included in Mycroft’s file. He bought a bottle of soda and followed her to the condiment and napkin stand.

“How old were you when Carl drowned?” Klages asked, discreetly, before Sherlock could even open his mouth.

“Thirteen,” Sherlock said automatically, evaluating her suspiciously out of the corner of his eye. “Why?”

“And when you first met, what was the number he gave you?”

“01 0958235,” the detective said with a certain unease. “How-”

“I had to know it was you,” she said in clipped English. “You can never be too sure, these days...”

Klages busied herself with the condiments for her six inch sub, but still flicked her gaze around the large open room roughly every ten seconds.

Sherlock narrowed his eyes. How had she been expecting him? “You were expecting me.”

“Of course.”

“How did you meet him?”

“We don’t have time for this,” she stated furtively. “Someone will see.” 

Sherlock glanced around them. The apparition was nowhere in sight and not a single other person was looking at them. He turned back to Klages. She was clearly more paranoid than him. He wondered exactly why that was.

“Then I’ll meet you-”

“No,” she said with finality and confidence that made Sherlock wonder exactly _what_ she would do if he attempted to follow her, knowing that whatever it was would not be good for him. She rooted around in her planner a bit before pulling something out.

“I don’t have anything for you but this,” Klages stated curtly, shoving the clean but slightly worn envelope into Sherlock’s hands, then stalking off with her lunch and a final sweeping glance of the cafeteria.

 

 

 

There was nothing inside but an address for a building in London and a six digit number followed by a ten digit number. Sherlock knew those would be the door code and the alarm code, respectively. This would be the thing he was searching for: Moriarty’s flat. Jim must have anticipated his contingency plan and accounted for it before Sherlock had even broke in to Kitty Riley’s.

Moriarty’s foresight both astounded and depressed him. Jim understood him so well and Sherlock...he hadn’t seen Jim until it was too late. 

The sheet of paper inside contained nothing more. but then he supposes after all that happened why should it?

Jim hadn’t left a personal note and Sherlock didn’t wonder why not.

 

 

 

He needed to get back to London as fast as he could. 

 

 

 

Sherlock blew out the smoke from his first cigarette of the day. The ship he’d come in on had docked in the predawn hours and the detective had come straight here once the gangways were down.

It had snowed during the night. The roads were slick with ice and slush under the fire colored dawn sky. He stood on the curb across from the side door to a completely innocuous looking building, which Sherlock now knew to be Jim Moriarty’s flat. An artist’s loft in a warehouse district, Sherlock had done some research during the journey and found that Moriarty’s deed was for the whole building. Which the detective thought was interesting, almost like Jim was cordoning off his space. 

Sherlock was distinctly aware of the presence of only one other person: Mycroft’s tail, lurking a block and a half away. There was a regulation edge to every man the elder Holmes deployed after him, that didn’t so much ease his paranoia as spurn his pride. The detective was actually surprised they were the only ones on the street. This time of morning typically saw packers readying shipments to be moved, but today there was only stillness. It would almost be eerie, if it wasn’t also Sunday. 

The presence he really missed was Jim’s. Sherlock hadn’t seen the apparition since Mycroft had dropped off the file. That was barely two days ago, but it was still the longest the apparition had stayed away. Jim hadn’t been there when he had woken up and he still hadn’t shown in the time it took Sherlock to make it to the flat. The detective imagined that maybe Jim didn’t want to spook him and that the sooner he saw what was inside the building, the sooner he’d get to talk to the apparition again. 

Mycroft’s man was waiting for Sherlock to go inside a building, so he could report the location back to the elder Holmes, which gave the detective five or six hours to explore the place before Mycroft’s teams moved in. 

It was not enough time. But then he wasn’t going to ask Mycroft for more.

With the clock ticking, he stubbed out his cigarette and stepped off the sidewalk, the rock salt crunching and providing friction as he crossed the street. 

 

 

 

Sherlock punched in the door code and entered the building. It was no warmer than the street, but certainly louder with its panicked beeping. The detective glanced around the darkened landing for the alarm box. It took his flashlight to find it and he promptly turned it off with the longer string of numbers. He climbed to the second floor and pushes open the door to Jim’s living space. 

Sherlock’s gaze barely rested on anything for a second before continuing his sweep of the flat. His eyes took in every detail of the place avariciously. 

It was simple and relatively clean, if a tad cluttered. The worn leather couch, obviously expensive, sat in the center of the living space. A broad desk with a computer and laptop near the window with its shades drawn. The detective admitted he could see Moriarty living here. 

Everything was oddly tidy. Almost as if Moriarty knew it’d be the last time he would be coming back and wanted everything neat before he left. The refrigerator was empty. Even Jim’s bed was made. Though Sherlock had not thought the criminal actually slept the night before the Fall anyway. 

Then, of course, there was the large portion of living room wall, which apparently also functioned as an office, that was plastered with clippings from the papers about Sherlock. The detective let his fingers brush the yellowing paper. Jeff Hope certainly hadn’t been kidding when he said that Moriarty was his fan. Jim had been meticulous. The collage covered nearly everything that he had consulted on which had gotten press coverage, all the way back to Carl Powers, even cases Sherlock had allowed the Yard to take credit for were included.

 

 

 

Jim still hadn’t made an appearance when Sherlock finished his self-guided tour. The detective went over to the large bookshelf that covered one of the living room walls and peered at the volumes there.

He let his long fingers run along a row of thin black notebooks. Sherlock had found Moriarty’s flat, the base of his operations and personal quarters. Of course, it was more than fascinating. 

Sherlock had made a career out of looking at objects and extrapolating meaning. He’d thought that once he found Jim Moriarty’s flat with his life in possessions all laid out for Sherlock, somehow he’d would gain some deeper understanding, something more. He saw all the little quirks of a place that showed a person lived there. Like the toothbrush glass being to the left of the sink, not the right. Stray water rings on the bedside table. A half assembled computer on a desk in the corner, parts strewn. But the place hadn’t really given him what he had been searching for and he was faced with the question of what he should do now. 

Sherlock took one of the many leather bound notebooks from the shelf and flipped it open to find it, as he’d rightly thought, full of Jim’s loopy scrawl. He meandered over to Moriarty’s couch and began to read, hoping Jim would appear soon.

 

 

 

“Sherlock.”

Jim’s voice roused him from his examination of Moriarty’s journals. The detective turned and saw the criminal was sitting on the couch too. _So he’d finally decided to show up._

Even in the dim light of the afternoon, Sherlock could see the couch dipped where the apparition was sitting. As if his ghostly form had the weight it never had before. 

Sherlock blinked.

Jim edged closer to him. 

The detective was filing away Jim’s every movement meticulously now. After three years of conversing with what he had thought was a realistic apparition of the criminal, only now did he see his folly. All the details of Jim’s visage, which had been so clear in those final moments on the rooftop together, were suddenly sitting there with him again. Sherlock couldn’t resist. He reached out his hand. He wanted so badly to touch Moriarty. Three years of banter with this ghost and he had thought about it. Of course, he had _thought_ about it.

The detective watched Jim’s surprise as Sherlock’s fingers brushed along his cheek. The way his eyes flickered shut. How he leaned ever so slightly into Sherlock’s touch. 

When Moriarty opened his eyes again, he had a small smile on his face. Sherlock smiled back.

“You’re here,” he whispered, in awe, as his fingers dropped and sought out Jim’s hand. He gripped it tightly.

Moriarty squeezed the detective’s hand back and cozied up to him till there was no space between them. The warmth of the criminal’s body was a comforting reassurance that Jim was there with him again. 

Sherlock closed his eyes and breathed in the smell of Jim’s hair and for the first time in his last three years of travel, undercover work, and hunting; he felt truly at peace. 

“You can sleep now,” Jim said into the detective’s chest, voice quiet as his arms worm around Sherlock. “You can sleep now.”

 

 

 

The journal Sherlock had loosely clasped in his hands fell to the ground with a thud as he jolted awake. Harried, the detective looked beside him, but Jim wasn’t seated there. The worn leather was cold and there was no evidence that the criminal had been there moments ago.

Sherlock sat back, a slightly hollow feeling taking root in his chest as he understood the moments he had spent in Moriarty’s arms were all a dream. He was still in the criminal’s former residence, and it was still morning.

Strangely, the light coming through the window was still that odd orangey-dawn. Sherlock had scoured the apartment earlier and found Moriarty did not have a clock and the detective had pawned his watch years ago and his phone was dead again. But given how little the light outside had changed, he must have been dozing for only a few minutes, despite the vague sensation of not being able to feel his butt. Though that could be from sitting too long or that Jim’s flat was preternaturally cold. 

The detective stood and looked around for Jim. He wasn’t in the main room. That was odd. 

Sherlock was so exhausted, but he had some questions about what the criminal had written down in his journals. They were fascinating, as was expected. 

“Jim?”

Sherlock peeked into the bedroom, then the bathroom, and absurdly the closet having no luck in locating Jim.

The apparition simply was not anywhere. As he stepped back into the main living space, the realization hit Sherlock like a lead pipe. The detective had dismantled the criminal’s web and discovered all the remaining world had to tell him about Moriarty and that was the end of Jim’s spectoring apparition. He knew it. Jim was gone for good. 

Sherlock was alone. 

He had to remind himself to breathe. When the detective’s lungs finally started working again, his breath came in large sucking rasps. Sherlock could not hold back the sob that shook his body. 

 

 

 

For the third time in less than five years, Moriarty’s departure had sent the detective reeling. Though Sherlock wasn’t sure this time, Jim’s leaving was entirely within his control. (He also wasn’t entirely sure it _wasn’t._ )

Without the consulting criminal’s crimes, the world needed no consulting detective to solve them. Mycroft gave him the key with Klages’ whereabouts, thinking that it would bring the detective home. Except that Sherlock didn’t have one of those anymore. His place in the world left with Moriarty.

_He could sleep. He could sleep now._

The words Jim had spoken in Sherlock’s dream rattled around his mind.

It seemed only too fitting that his end destination be here. After all, the search for this place was Moriarty’s final puzzle for him; what had kept him going after all the strings of the web were laid out in orderly prison cells and graves.

Sherlock walked back to Jim’s bed room. 

 

 

 

The detective threw back the dusty constellation covered duvet and sat on the edge of Jim’s bed, fingers smoothing over the navy silk sheets. He took out the kit he’d bought in the train station while he waited for his final connection back to London from Munich.

Sherlock was methodical more out of habit than some daze. He was familiar with how to induce a cocaine overdose and the detective had prepared this particular injection with those steps in mind. At least with Mycroft’s people coming in a few hours, he knew his body wouldn’t sit decrepit in an abandoned flat for long.

Even after years clean, cooking up came back to him as if it were reflex; dissolving the cocaine, preparing the shot, finding the vein, taking a deep breath, and pushing the needle in. 

He laid down on Jim’s bed, getting comfortable. Moriarty had slept here. It was something of a revelation. Sherlock turned his face into the pillow, which had probably smelled like the criminal at one point but now all he could smell is dust. 

He could feel the drug taking hold in his veins. It was a familiar feeling yet more heady than any before.

From the angle he was stretched out, Sherlock could see through a gap in the curtains how the sky had turned a light blue.

Sherlock shut his eyes. He could sleep now. He could sleep.


End file.
